Abstract
Bioclusters have grown in popularity in the last decade in response to the global environmental and climate challenges. These clusters envisage sustainable and local production value chains in different sectors of the bioeconomy. However, the sustainability of these clusters is often questioned because of the negative social and environmental effects they can have both inside and outside of their region. At present, a framework is missing to analyze these effects that span multiple levels and multiple scales. The aim of this paper is to develop such a multiscalar framework. For this aim, we conducted a meta-analysis of biocluster case studies. As a result, we constructed a framework that combines the aspects of sustainability, knowledge and resource flows, cluster network properties, and the political and institutional structures. We tested this framework on the question of how the different scales of biocluster performance interact and depend on each other.
Highlights
The bioeconomy was originally envisaged as an alternative economic system that would not jeopardize the environment, and that would provide a safe living for future generations [1]
We argue that biocluster research requires a more scale-sensitive approach in order to ensure more stable and reliable prospects for the bioeconomy
We considered only clusters working with renewable biological resources, which is in line with the definition of bioeconomy used in this paper [3]
Summary
The bioeconomy was originally envisaged as an alternative economic system that would not jeopardize the environment, and that would provide a safe living for future generations [1]. In recent years, this concept has been growing in popularity, in both the science and the policy arenas, as a potential way of organizing production and consumption practices in society in a more sustainable way by using renewable and biological resources instead of fossil fuels [2]. A transformation toward a bioeconomy promises innovative and sustainable use of renewable biological resources in different sectors of the economy, and opens new avenues to reach different Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [7,8]. The history of first-generation biofuels reminds us how different issues related to indirect land use, deforestation, biodiversity losses, and negative social and environmental effects might arise at different geographical levels [4,10,11,12,13]
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